One of my favorite jokes to tell is an elephant joke. Elephant jokes by their nature are like knock-knock jokes, which means they run the gamut from the absurd to the sublime. My favorite elephant joke has proven a bit too esoteric for most crowds, but it always gets a laugh. This is due, in large part, I suppose, to the fact that the joke never fails to make me laugh, which in turn makes others laugh. Granted, they may indeed be laughing at me, or laughing because I could find the joke so amusing. Whatever the case, I enjoy the few moments of merriment shared even if it is at my own expense. A good laugh is not overrated. Maybe it is no coincidence that in the Hindu religion, Ganesh or Ganapati, recognized as the elephant-headed deity, is known as the remover of obstacles. In my experience, genuine laughter has helped to transform many a perceived impasse.
Last Saturday, I attended a workshop led by the ebullient yoga teacher, Erika Burkhalter. The theme of the workshop was about the nature and the neuroscience of Happiness. Fittingly, Erika began her talk with an anecdote about Lakshmi, the elephant guardian of the Virupaksha Temple in Hampi, India. For the small donation of a bunch of bananas, Lakshmi will bless her donor with a pat on the head from her trunk. No joke. I have since learned that there is some controversy regarding the captivity and treatment of temple elephants in India and other parts of Asia. Not a joking matter at all. Still, Erika's story about Lakshmi the elephant was shared with us to underscore what much of the research into Happiness has revealed: When we can view ourselves as belonging to something bigger than ourselves, we tend to be happier.
Years ago, when I was a lonely single woman in my late twenties, and doing my best to convince myself that it was a good thing to be alone and single, I met a wheel-chair bound woman selling flowers at the close of the day. We were both making our way home. It was early evening, and a few flowers remained unsold at the bottom of the woman's flower bucket. We talked, as strangers sometimes will, casually sharing intimate versions of our lives as we saw them in that moment in time. As we parted ways, the flower woman reached into her bucket and handed me a rose. She paused, reached into the bucket once more and handed over a second rose. When giving me the second rose she said, "Here. Living things are not meant to be alone." As I think about that exchange all these years later, what surprises me most is how hard I worked then at not appearing vulnerable while at the same time--alone and away from the eyes of the world--I was unwittingly giving vulnerability a military polish. It took me many years to recognize how old I had chosen to be, how much playfulness I had passed up for what I was in the process of accepting as my small place in the universe. Now, I understand like Walt Whitman--his body electric--that I, too, "contain infinities."
I do believe there is an art to Happiness, and like any good art, we must live our lives into it. According to the Dalai Lama, the very motion of our life travels towards happiness. I find myself laying claim to the word motion in the way I imagine someone who decides they have to have a particular tattoo does. It feels right to think of Happiness as movement, as something with momentum, something that builds as change did for Dickens, propagating faster than anything else could. I like the idea that our lives are inexorably oriented toward Happiness. After surviving a week or a month or several years spent in difficult patches, it is a comfort to arrive at a place where a sense of lightness is restored.
At the end of 2004, days before the new year, a tsunami wave in the Indian Ocean killed a quarter of a million people in Indonesia in one day. Almost two million people were rendered homeless. Whole countries were wiped clean. I remember seeing the newspaper headlines and photos as the new year dawned safe and sound on this side of the world. It was unimaginable in the truest sense of the word. Last week, NPR correspondent Michael Sullivan returned to Indonesia, to Aceh Province, one of the regions the hardest hit by the tsunami. A decade later, Sullivan had gone back to see how people had rebuilt their lives. Ten years later, the stories of recovery and resilience proved mixed. Some people were faring better than others. Sullivan found stories of poverty and despair left after the departure of aid groups provided by American NGOs. But he also found the story of Mursulin, a 40-year-old Indonesian man who had lost his wife and son in the tsunami. When Sullivan first met Mursulin in 2006, Mursulin never smiled. He was despondent and found it difficult to get out of bed each day. Gradually, however, Mursulin got back into the stream of life. Eventually, he remarried, and he now has three children. During the interview last week, Sullivan said that he was struck by how often Mursulin smiles now. Mursulin's explanation: He has a family to care for and that gets him out of bed every day. His small, sturdy two-bedroom home was built with the help of an American NGO. Mursulin has since added to the structure to accommodate his growing family. He works as a subcontractor for a small construction company, and he is happy, his word, that his once clear view of the mountain is now being disrupted by the construction of other homes, homes that will provide shelter and comfort to his neighbors. Mursulin recognizes that he belongs to something bigger, and for that, he is happy.
When Joseph Brackett, a Shaker from Maine, wrote the song Simple Gifts in 1848, he had no idea how popular this song with its minimal verse would become. The composer Aaron Copeland would later memorialize the song in his score written for the ballet Appalachian Spring. Brackett originally wrote the song as a means of paying tribute to the beliefs of the Shaker religion, which celebrates simplicity and humility. The song's lyrics are about finding one's sense of place in the world. For Brackett and his fellow Shakers, this was the key to Happiness. I heard the same message in Erika's "Dissolving Into Happiness" workshop.
Life will present us always with its multiple means of devastation. It, too, has its lessons to teach. But the devastation does not negate the joy. Granted, we may have to wait, as poet Galway Kinnell instructs for "personal events to become interesting again; hair will become interesting again; (even) pain will become interesting...(because) the need for the new love--or our renewed sense of Happiness--is faithfulness to the old." We are like the picture of the sea star a friend shared with me last week, capable of regrowing limbs, replacing what we lost with new energy, new purpose, renewed joy.
Last Saturday, I attended a workshop led by the ebullient yoga teacher, Erika Burkhalter. The theme of the workshop was about the nature and the neuroscience of Happiness. Fittingly, Erika began her talk with an anecdote about Lakshmi, the elephant guardian of the Virupaksha Temple in Hampi, India. For the small donation of a bunch of bananas, Lakshmi will bless her donor with a pat on the head from her trunk. No joke. I have since learned that there is some controversy regarding the captivity and treatment of temple elephants in India and other parts of Asia. Not a joking matter at all. Still, Erika's story about Lakshmi the elephant was shared with us to underscore what much of the research into Happiness has revealed: When we can view ourselves as belonging to something bigger than ourselves, we tend to be happier.
Years ago, when I was a lonely single woman in my late twenties, and doing my best to convince myself that it was a good thing to be alone and single, I met a wheel-chair bound woman selling flowers at the close of the day. We were both making our way home. It was early evening, and a few flowers remained unsold at the bottom of the woman's flower bucket. We talked, as strangers sometimes will, casually sharing intimate versions of our lives as we saw them in that moment in time. As we parted ways, the flower woman reached into her bucket and handed me a rose. She paused, reached into the bucket once more and handed over a second rose. When giving me the second rose she said, "Here. Living things are not meant to be alone." As I think about that exchange all these years later, what surprises me most is how hard I worked then at not appearing vulnerable while at the same time--alone and away from the eyes of the world--I was unwittingly giving vulnerability a military polish. It took me many years to recognize how old I had chosen to be, how much playfulness I had passed up for what I was in the process of accepting as my small place in the universe. Now, I understand like Walt Whitman--his body electric--that I, too, "contain infinities."
I do believe there is an art to Happiness, and like any good art, we must live our lives into it. According to the Dalai Lama, the very motion of our life travels towards happiness. I find myself laying claim to the word motion in the way I imagine someone who decides they have to have a particular tattoo does. It feels right to think of Happiness as movement, as something with momentum, something that builds as change did for Dickens, propagating faster than anything else could. I like the idea that our lives are inexorably oriented toward Happiness. After surviving a week or a month or several years spent in difficult patches, it is a comfort to arrive at a place where a sense of lightness is restored.
At the end of 2004, days before the new year, a tsunami wave in the Indian Ocean killed a quarter of a million people in Indonesia in one day. Almost two million people were rendered homeless. Whole countries were wiped clean. I remember seeing the newspaper headlines and photos as the new year dawned safe and sound on this side of the world. It was unimaginable in the truest sense of the word. Last week, NPR correspondent Michael Sullivan returned to Indonesia, to Aceh Province, one of the regions the hardest hit by the tsunami. A decade later, Sullivan had gone back to see how people had rebuilt their lives. Ten years later, the stories of recovery and resilience proved mixed. Some people were faring better than others. Sullivan found stories of poverty and despair left after the departure of aid groups provided by American NGOs. But he also found the story of Mursulin, a 40-year-old Indonesian man who had lost his wife and son in the tsunami. When Sullivan first met Mursulin in 2006, Mursulin never smiled. He was despondent and found it difficult to get out of bed each day. Gradually, however, Mursulin got back into the stream of life. Eventually, he remarried, and he now has three children. During the interview last week, Sullivan said that he was struck by how often Mursulin smiles now. Mursulin's explanation: He has a family to care for and that gets him out of bed every day. His small, sturdy two-bedroom home was built with the help of an American NGO. Mursulin has since added to the structure to accommodate his growing family. He works as a subcontractor for a small construction company, and he is happy, his word, that his once clear view of the mountain is now being disrupted by the construction of other homes, homes that will provide shelter and comfort to his neighbors. Mursulin recognizes that he belongs to something bigger, and for that, he is happy.
When Joseph Brackett, a Shaker from Maine, wrote the song Simple Gifts in 1848, he had no idea how popular this song with its minimal verse would become. The composer Aaron Copeland would later memorialize the song in his score written for the ballet Appalachian Spring. Brackett originally wrote the song as a means of paying tribute to the beliefs of the Shaker religion, which celebrates simplicity and humility. The song's lyrics are about finding one's sense of place in the world. For Brackett and his fellow Shakers, this was the key to Happiness. I heard the same message in Erika's "Dissolving Into Happiness" workshop.
Life will present us always with its multiple means of devastation. It, too, has its lessons to teach. But the devastation does not negate the joy. Granted, we may have to wait, as poet Galway Kinnell instructs for "personal events to become interesting again; hair will become interesting again; (even) pain will become interesting...(because) the need for the new love--or our renewed sense of Happiness--is faithfulness to the old." We are like the picture of the sea star a friend shared with me last week, capable of regrowing limbs, replacing what we lost with new energy, new purpose, renewed joy.
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